Urban expansion dramatically alters land surface properties and influences the surface energy budget, which intensifies the urban heat island (UHI) effect
[1]. Building energy use (BEU) can be influenced significantly by urban climate change because it drives the operation of energy system
[2]. Although previous studies evaluated the impact of UHI effect on BEU by simulating BEU with and without UHI effect, few of them explored the detailed spatial and temporal variations of BEU, especially under urban expansion, mainly due to the lack of high spatial and temporal resolution gridded surface air temperature (SAT) datasets. In this study, we estimated SAT in the summer (June-August), 2012 in a high spatial resolution using the mesoscale Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and evaluated its performance using hourly temperature observations at meteorological stations. Second, we evaluated the impact of urban land expansion on SAT by updating land surface properties using annual urban extent dataset
[3] in the WRF model. Third, we estimated BEU by using a City Building Energy Use Model (CityBEUM)
[4] drove by SAT from the WRF. Finally, we explored spatial and temporal patterns of BEU in summer time under urban land expansion during 1985-2015 in Boston and Des Moines, USA, and quantified the impact of urban land expansion on BEU. The findings from this study are of great help for policymaker in understanding building energy use and its changes in the context of urbanization.
[1] L. Chen, M. Zhang, J. Zhu, Y. Wang, and A. Skorokhod, “Modeling impacts of urbanization and urban heat island mitigation on boundary layer meteorology and air quality in Beijing under different weather conditions,” J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., vol. 123, no. 8, pp. 4323–4344, 2018.
[2] Y. Zhou et al., “Modeling the effect of climate change on US state-level buildings energy demands in an integrated assessment framework,” Appl. Energy, vol. 113, pp. 1077–1088, 2014.
[3] X. Li, Y. Zhou, Z. Zhu, and W. Cao, “A national dataset of 30 m annual urban extent dynamics (1985–2015) in the conterminous United States,” Earth Syst. Sci. Data, vol. 12, no. 1, p. 357, 2020.
[4] W. Li, Y. Zhou, K. S. Cetin, S. Yu, Y. Wang, and B. Liang, “Developing a landscape of urban building energy use with improved spatiotemporal representations in a cool-humid climate,” Build. Environ., vol. 136, pp. 107–117, 2018.
